No matter how many online searches I've done for places

>>1208846
>How do you make sure that you've checked out as much as you can and not missed any gems when you travel to a place?
I don't even try to do this. If I'm traveling for business I'm lucky if I manage to get a little feel for the place. If I'm traveling for pleasure I enjoy kicking back.
>How do you personally research a place you're going to visit, /trv/?
I don't because I'm married to a girl who is a really great researcher. If she's traveling with me I tell her what I'm interested in doing/seeing/eating and she does the research. Thankfully she doesn't mind missing stuff either. She's more into just finding a good place to hang and hanging there.

>>1208846
You just have to accept it that you CANNOT (and will not) experience / see everything in each place, unless you stay there for "way too long".

Just accept it and enjoy moments. See some "top 10 trip advisor" things and just stroll around the place, talk with some locals or if you don't speak the language, just hang out with local areas. Much more fun than going to Old Religious place #4523, Famous Building where X happaned or the Waterfall.

>>1208865
>Much more fun than going to Old Religious place #4523, Famous Building where X happaned or the Waterfall.
This. There are the sights all the tourists are going to see, but if the place is anything more than a tourist trap there will be much more interesting things going on. Just look for where the locals go to have a good time.

>>1209056
How do you find out where the locals go? Pick one and follow them? That's stalking.

>>1210335
That's the kind of post you only find on 4chan.

I use many tools, tripadvisor and wikitravel via Google in combination with a local search engine (eg. baidu for china, naver for korea, yandex for russia etc etc)... I go to my local library often, so I also scan through Lonely Planet and Rough Guide and whatever books they might have about the region.
I mostly stare at the maps first, try to figure out which areas are the best to stay in, what route I want to take...

If it's with friends, it's a whole different story, we have our elaborate common planning method that mostly involves us shooting random pictures of disgusting food and links to tourist traps to each other.